Lightroom Q&A Day

Time for another round of Q&A directly from the comments here on the website:

Q. Matt, I’ve been following your site for a while now and have become curious about what your develop preset menu looks like, i.e., how do you manage the thousands of presets you seem to have?

A. Unfortunately I don’t have a very good management scheme. If you saw the video from last week on Managing Presets you saw my Presets panel and you can see I don’t do a good job of managing them. I’m trying to get better and I think the one thing I plan on doing is creating a “Favorites” folder like I showed in the video. I think I’ll probably start to create separate folders for “Special Effects”, “Black and White”, “Edges” etc. so I can tame the list a bit.

Q. When printing to JPEG in the print module, is there a way for the name of the image/file you’re printing to be used in the Save As dialog box? This would save tons of time/typing. Thanks!

A. Nope. You’d think a default of that image name would pop in there automatically but it doesn’t. Great idea though.

Q. Is it possible to create a print (either for printer or JPEG output) that has different images of different sizes?

A. No. You can have different sizes if you create a picture package, but it’s going to be the same image. You can put different images using the contact sheet option but it’s going to force each cell to the same size.

While we’re on this printing topic, I do get questions in this form or another very often. It usually revolves around people wanting to print album pages with specific ideas in mind. Right now, the print module is made primarily for contact sheets, one-photo prints, or picture packages. It’s not a book layout engine and it’s not meant to print album pages or pages that could be used in books (even though we can “force” it to with some creativity). I’m not sure if that’ll change in the future (I hope they’ll add some sort of book module or printing options) but we can always hope. Either way, once you understand that the Print module is not really meant for books and photo albums and complex layouts, I think it helps to come to grips with what you can/can’t do.

Q. Here’s an HDR question. If I select 5 photos and File > Plugin extras > Export to Photomatix Pro, where are the .TIF files being stored at? I can’t find them on my computer anywhere and they have to be here. I want to delete them so as not to clutter my computer.

A. I’ve wondered about the same thing actually. I asked the folks at Photomatix (HDRSoft.com) and they told me the files are created somewhere in temporary storage and are deleted when you’re done processing them into the file image. I have yet to verify this but, from what I’ve seen, they’re a very thorough software developer so I have no doubt that they wouldn’t leave all the high quality TIFFs floating around out there to clutter your computer.

Thanks for all of the questions folks. As always keep ‘em coming. Have a great day!

Matt is the full-time Director of Education for Kelby Media Group and a Tampa-based photographer. He's the Editor-in-Chief of Lightroom Magazine, the lead instructor on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom LIVE Seminar Tour and author of several best-selling Photoshop books. Matt also hosts the world's top Lightroom blog, LightroomKillerTips.com, where he's built up a massive library of Lightroom videos, presets and tips. In addition to teaching Photoshop, Lightroom and photography seminars around the world, he's an instructor at Photoshop World and one of the full-time staff writers for Photoshop User Magazine.

31 Comments

Hello Matt
I watched your video on creating multi photo templates and I tried it. It worked great and I created a three photo template. I am new to Lightroom and I tried to export the multi photo template to a folder so I could send it out to have it printed and all I get is the main central photo. I can’t seem to ” save” export the three photos in the template I created. Do you have any ideas or suggestions on what I may be doing wrong. My three photo template shows all three photos in lightroom but I can’t seem to get all three to export out.

When I import RAW photos I have it set to convert to dng format. I have noticed my hard drive disappearing fast, so when I looked at the folder Lightrrom imports to it has two folders. One folder is named correctly with the dng format photos and the other folder is named after the day I imported the RAW photos with the RAW format photos. So I now have two copies of the same photo, one RAW format and one DNG format. Is this normal when importing the photos and converting to DNG format?

It also does the same thing for JPG photos. The exact same photo in two folders. One folder named after the day imported and the other folder is what I named it during the import process. Any thoughts or tips?

In Adobe Lightroom 2 (Mac), can one create a small test print of a small portion of a large image to check sharpening, contrast, etc, without losing the exact look of the full sized print? Similar to the test strips we used to check exposure in the darkroom. I want to print a small portion of a 17×22 print on 8×10 or smaller paper.

I’ve been using a very slick program called Dropbox that is very cool for keeping items accessible from all my computers and for that matter any computer. By keeping a database located in the Dropbox, I can keep programs in sync from anywhere. Question is: is there any way to move the Lightroom Presets folder to a different location from its default and tell Lightroom where to find it? If I kept it in Dropbox, all my computers would have access to the most current collection of Presets. Otherwise I have to remember to move the folder back and forth from desktop to laptop before every trip, and back again afterwards.

Kudos on your site – I am a Lightroom addict and the wealth of great information you provide is greatly appreciated!

I have been using Bridge for the past few years to add keywords to all of my photos. I just bought LR recently and am just learning to use it. I have yet to import all of my photos, but the few that I have imported don’t seem to have the keywords that I assigned to them in Bridge available in LR. Is there any way to get LR to recognize that I had previously added in Bridge? I am dreading having to keyword all my photos all over again! Also, can LR see and use the ratings that I had given to my photos previously in Bridge?

Hello Matt,
One question… Im making my web gallery, and I don’t know how to put folders inside of it, like portraits or nature, etc… so all my photos don’t come up at the same time… is there a way to do this?
Thanks

I’d like to demo Lightroom to my Photoshop and Photography students, but when I plug my 17-inch MacBook Pro into our projector (with “detect displays” and mirroring enabled on the MBP), the resolution changes such that I can’t arrange Lightroom in a usable manner.

Can you tell me what resolution settings you use for the projector (VGA) and laptop monitor resolution for your Lightroom seminars?

Since I have upgraded from Lightroom 1 to 2 and onward, I have been unable to print as I did before with allowing the printer to manage the color. I haven’t changed anything with the settings on the printer but the prints are desaturated and off color.

Please let me know what I should be doing as I was printing like crazy before from lightroom, great album pages, now I have to set is up in photoshop and print from photoshop CS4

hi,
I’ve actually wondered how you created those borders in LR. The on that of the three images in top right corner of this website. It is fairly easy to do it in PS however LR is little difficult.
This might get lost in the thousands of comments, I guess.
br

Thanks for the suggestion. I might be doing something wrong, but when I export and set a dimension there, it tries to resize to match the criteria given. However, if your original aspect does not match that requested, then it only resizes until it meets just one of those dimensions.

For example, the 5D2 shoots 5616×3744 (4×6). If you just export the original and select resize to 800×600, the resulting image is 800×533. I believe this is due to the fact that original aspect is 4×6 and I am requesting a 4×3 end result. If I crop for the 4×3 aspect ratio, then regardless of the original size, the resize will then work fine.

Hi Matt, my name is Peter Curley and I have been learning from your podcasts since 2007. Many thanks for all the tips and the many “so that’s what that does” features. I don’t see any other way to ask this so I’ll put it here. Recently, I have been delegated as the digital director of our camera club, the Peterborough Photographic Society, http://www.ptbophoto.com, as well as the clubs web master. I have expressed to the executive that I would like to include a small tutorial section to our monthly meetings and we have now dubbed this as the PPS Academy. As this is something new it has been decided to run our PPS Academy towards the end of the break and only spend 5 – 10 minutes to see how this will be accepted by the members. I strongly believe that it will not only be accepted but expanded in next years agenda. I would like to ask your permission to use your podcasts in addition to my own tutorials at our meetings. Of course they would be played in full including advertising included in the podcasts. Thanks in advance.

I only used the Photomatix plugin twice- once today and once in October. I don’t use HDR too much, and found that creating the Tiffs was a bit slow. But regarding the comment on storing them in a temporary folder- that automatically gets deleted, I went into the temp folder, and did find the tiff’s both from today and October. Both folders were at .5GB. For me, it doesn’t seem to have cleared out. I also think it gets removed when I choose to delete temp internet files if I want to clean up the PC a bit, which I haven’t done in awhile (this was a good reminder to do so now).

Hi, I have created my catalog using LR and burned it onto a CD. I know there is a way to open it from the CD using another computer without the source of the images, but I’m not sure how it is done. If anyone could help me it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-How-

It is possible to get a portrait crop from a landscape original (or vice versa), but it’s not obvious how.
Select the crop ratio that you want, and drag a corner so it gets smaller. Once it is small enough you will be able to drag the corner diagonally so that the crop area switches from landscape to portrait, but it will only work once the crop area is small enough to fit without overlapping the edges of the photo. For example, with a landscape original drag the top left corner down and right to shrink the crop area until the length of the crop is say half the length of the photo. Then keep dragging the corner but right and up. The orientation of the crop should change and can then be dragged/resized as normal.
Brian

Thanks for all the time you invest in sharing your LR knowledge with all of us. Something that I really miss in LR is more control over the cropping tool. I seem to use Photoshop fewer and fewer now that I get to know LR better. What bothers me is that you don’t really have control over the crop tool Of course, you can select an aspect ratio… But I don’t seem to be able to create a portrait cut ouf of a landscape original for instance (sometimes you only see afterwards that this was the better option haha).

Anyone with printing problems amongst the readers? If I print (from the print module of course) and set my printer, profile to use etc… I get a print that is way too dark and has completely washed out colors… Tried different settings… no result. Even tried printing to Adobe pdf (and just have the printer manage the colors). Horrible result… Every suggestion is welcom (I use an Epson R1800 printer with dedicated papers and profiles).

I have found a solution at the question: ?Is it possible to create a print that has different images of different sizes??

In the Print module to select a Template of kind ?Picture Package?, for example the first ?(1) 4×6, (6) 2×3?. In the box Cells, on the right, click on button ?Clear Layout?. In the box Template Browser, on the left, click on symbol + to create a new preset with name ?Book Layout? and save it. Close Lightroom. In the preference folder of LR, open Print Templates folder and then open User Template folder. Open with an EditorText the preset ?Book Layout?; find at bottom of file the line code ?oneImagePerPage = true? and to change the value ?true? with the value ?false?. Save and close the file. Open Lightroom and select the preset ?Book Layout?. In the box Cells, on the right, select different empty cells of different sizes and then to select the photos on the filmstrip. In the box Image setting, on the right, check Rotate to Fit option and uncheck Zoom to Fill option. Click on a photo and resize and move. The button New Page adds a new empty page to insert other photos.

Wow awesome – I had set up an ‘open in external editor’ function to try to pop things into photomatix, but that created duplicates in my image directories I had to go back and delete by hand, much easier to just drag and drop from explorer. I will try out this export function.

Following on from Ben’s question above, is it possible to have “additive” presets rather than “replacing” presets?

I’ve been mucking around recently with a preset that sets a bunch of development related settings along with a calibration profile. If I apply this to a new photo it’s great, but if, for example, I apply it to a photo that already has some exposure compensation then I lose my exposure compensation rather than simply altering the exposure compensation +/- the new value. Is such a thing possible?

I have been frustrated recently with LR and wonder if I’m just missing some easy step. I just loaded 2100 photos from a recent trip into LR, and as I started to review them the photos would start out looking great, but after a second or so, they would go through some sort of automatic processing that completely ruined the shot; I then noticed that LR had autonomously changed the exposure on each shot as it processed it. Surely this is a setting somewhere, but I cannot seem to find it. What did I do wrong?

Craig, it sounds like you’re in Auto Hide & Show mode. Try this: In the Library panel, Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the triangles at the outside of the interface (next to the panels areas) and choose Manual. Now your panels will open and close when you tell them to. Note: These settings are module specific, so you’ll have to do this for every module.

Ben, make your Split Toning panel adjustments and click the Create New Preset icon in the Presets panel header. In the New Develop Preset dialog, click the Check None button, then turn on Split Toning. Name your preset and click Create. When you apply the preset, only the split toning effect will be applied to your photo (plus whatever affect those adjustments have on the white balance settings).

David, in the Image Sizing section of Export dialog, you can set the dimensions, unit of measure, and resolution for your exported photos, so you don’t have to crop your photos unless you want to. If the stacks bother you, you could put your images for export in a separate collection. Matt might have a better answer for you. I hope this helps.

Great site. Thanks for your efforts. I have a question to add for Q&A day.

Is there a way to easily generate (export) two different size images from the same original photo?

Let me explain a bit since the question sounds simple on the surface. My camera captures in 4×6 mode. This is great for printing out photos. However, I have a digital picture frame that is 800×600 mode. If I just export for photos, then the picture frame is not full screen (or vice versa).

To solve this I am making a virtual copy of the image after getting the where I want it. Then I am cropping the second image to 800×600. This works, but then I have to hide the images in stacks or use filters not to display the duplicate 2nd images. Not to mention, all my photos then have a little [2] icons pasted on them wasting space on the thumbnail.

One question I’ve had for months that never seems to be addressed: Can I save partial settings as a preset? For instance, I would like to only save the Split Toning settings as a preset, so that I don’t mess with the exposure and other settings. Is this possible?

It would be AWESOME if there was a dialog similar to the Sync dialog box that allowed you to choose what settings to save in the preset…

Matt,
I don’t if its just me but LR is driving me nuts!! When I am in the Library module and I am working with an image either on the far right or far left of the display the side panel opens and closes every time I place my cursor near an image. This usually happens when viewing in grid view but it does also happen in loupe view. Is there any way I can freeze the stupid side panel so it won’t do that? It’s bad enough when I’m alone but when I am reviewing images with a client it looks like I am a low rent, know-nothing kind of guy – which I am not!!! HELP!!!
Serenity now…….serenity now!!!
Craig